Probe Finds Police Fusion Centers Smother Freedom, Waste Millions

• Melding of local, state police offices with federal “war on terror” efforts a mistake

By Mark Anderson

The post 9-11 network of law-enforcementfusion centers set up in every state tohelp fight the “war on terror,” fundedthrough a grants process Congress set up, is getting terrible grades in a 141-page report bythe Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,chaired by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

That panel reviewed more than 600 unclassified reports over a one-year period, concluding thatmost of the operations carried out, after the expenditure of well over $1B, had virtuallynothing to do with terrorism.

“The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat,nor could it identify a contribution such fusioncenter reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot,” the October 3 report says, in part.

“It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers . . . designed to share information . . . have becomepart of the problem. Instead of strengthening ourcounter-terrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on Americans’ civil liberties,”said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). Coburninitiated the investigation that resulted in this report, called “Federal Support for and Involvementin State and Local Fusion Centers.”

In other words, the United States has a mega-expensiveanti-terror apparatus that really doesn’tfight terrorism but becomes another self-perpetuating bureaucracy that tries to smother freedom.

And yet this startling Senate report was followedby something perhaps even more eye-opening—the October 8 release of a House PermanentSelect Committee on Intelligence report, entitled, “Investigative Report on the U.S. National SecurityIssues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE.” So, while the U.S.security bureaucracy has been looking for theslightest signs of pending sabotage and terror fromdomestic patriots and Muslims, China has continuedmaking major inroads into the United States.

The House report follows an 11-month investigationinto the business practices of Huawei Technologiesand ZTE Corp., two of the world’s largestmakers of telecommunications equipment. These firms develop and sell telecom gear like routers,handsets and switches. The report recommends that Huawei and ZTE be excluded from expandingtheir businesses in the U.S. because of “cyber-espionagerisks and connections to the Chinese government.”

The House report notes a threat is posed to U.S.national security “by vulnerabilities in the telecommunicationssupply chain . . . given the country’s reliance on interdependent critical infrastructuresystems . . . and the growing dependence all consumershave on a small group of equipment providers,” although Congress, as usual, seems tonedeaf to the fact that its financial and trade policiesare tailor-made for monopolies to take root.

Nor has Congress said much, if anything, about Foreign Trade Zones—entire Chinese industrialand residential communities transplanted intoIdaho and elsewhere in the United States, while much of America’s original industrial base hasbeen dismantled and “parted out” to China andmany other foreign locales. Some of America’s industry is rebounding, but it’s a long, hard process.

Among other important things, the House report obtained by AMERICAN FREE PRESS underscores the sheer fragility ofan over-centralized system developed without regard to local control by individuals and communities,even when handy, clean technology thatwould make the average home or factory less reliant on the grid for electricity is more accessibleand more affordable than ever before.

“The risk posed to U.S. national-security andeconomic interests by cyber-threats is an undeniablepriority,” the House report warns. It furtherstates:

First, the country’s reliance on telecommunications infrastructure includes more than consumers’use of computer systems. Rather, multiple critical infrastructure systems depend on informationtransmission through telecommunications systems—[including] electric power grids; banking and finance systems; natural gas, oil and water systems;and rail and shipping channels; each of which dependon computerized control systems. Further, system inter-dependencies among these critical infrastructuresgreatly increase the risk that failurein one system will cause failures or disruptions in multiple . . . systems.Therefore, a disruption in telecommunicationnetworks can have devastating effects on all aspectsof modern American living, causing shortages and stoppages that ripple throughout society,”observes the report. “[China’s] cyber- and human-enabled espionage efforts often exhibit sophisticatedtechnological capabilities,” and thesecapabilities include inserting “malicious hardware or software implants into Chinese-manufacturedtelecommunications components and systemsmarketed to the United States.

——Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor. Listen to Mark’s weekly radio show and email him at truthhound2@yahoo.com.

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